I just found out about this post about getting innovative about evaluations, by Zach Wilson. Some very, very interesting ideas— I highly recommend you check it out.

I don’t know if this is the solution, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the evaluation process as it currently stands is not all that useful. I’d love to hear any other suggestions on how to fix the problem.

This was a very practical, useful, lively session! The session leaders gave us all copies of different types of RFPs, and we went through them to find what they were doing right—and what needs improvement. “People are afraid they’ll lose bargaining power if they give too much information up front,” said session co-leader Karin Soyster, CAE, CMP, vice president, membership services, American Bakers Association, so they skimp and end up having to answer a bunch of clarifying phone calls. Another thing that planners complain about with RFPs is that they often get a ton of responses from properties that are just wrong for their meetings. Again, she said, you can minimize this by getting very specific about what you want and need.

Some things to include:
Full contact information
Submission and decision dates
Room rate range
History, including ancillary spend (spa, gift shop, restaurants, etc.), block and actual pickup info. If it’s a new meeting with no history, include history of similar events your organization has held to give them some idea. About three years or three previous meetings is sufficient.
Where you can and can’t be flexible (if you have a dealbreaker, let them know in no uncertain terms)
Break out singles, doubles, double-doubles, etc.
Type of attendee (student, CEOs, construction workers, etc.)
A little about what your organization is and does
A little about the topic of the meeting
Specific type of hotel you’re interested in (airport, downtown, resort, etc.)
Preferred patterns and dates
Who in the organization they should respond to, and the preferred method of response (e-mail, fax, etc.)
Detailed meeting and exhibit specifications, including square footage, tabletops, number of exhibits, etc.
AV needs
F&B revenues (especially important if you have a history of lower room rates and make up the difference with lots of F&B)
Required concessions and wish list
Meal function times
Setup schedules
Size of booths for expo

Other items of note:
• Ask attendees to charge as much as possible to their rooms, so the hotel can track their ancillary spending.
• If you’re sending the RFP to a CVB, be very specific about what you want (i.e., ask them to only send it to their downtown properties, if that’s all you will consider).
• If you say “no calls” but get calls anyway, tell your CVB who didn’t comply with your request so they can follow up with a reprimand.
• For your post-con, ask the property for: Singles, doubles, suites used; F&B guarantees vs. actual numbers; ancillary spending.
• Tell the hotel up front that you want them to track your attendees’ ancillary spending so they will be able to do it more easily and quickly.

Overall, this was an excellent session. Kudos to Soyster and her fellow presenters, Angela Rios, account manager with Experient; and Dale Encinosa, CHME, national sales manager, Rio Mar Beach Resort and Spa. Keep an eye on the ASAE meeting Web site, where they plan to post a list of all their tips soon.

asae2007

Robyn Waters, author of The Hummer and the Mini, gave a really thought-provoking thought-leader session on Tuesday about the contradictions inherent in modern-day life—and how we can capitalize on them in our work. It’s all about reframing what value means to your customers/stakeholders.

Contradiction is inherent in the human species, she said, because we are driven by two basic human desires:
1. We want to belong to a group of like-minded people.
2. We want to be viewed as unique individuals.

“We have to embrace paradox,” she said. “That’s why we accept things like Ford’s Escape, which is billed as a compact hybrid SUV.” Really, think about that for a sec. Your mind will hurt.

She provided some insights and examples from a few chapters of her book:

Everything Old is New Again
Take Airstream trailers, which have been around for ages. To get back in the market, they kept the classic aluminum skin, but filled the inside with state-of-the-art technology and furnishings.

Mass Customization
Talk about a paradox! But that’s what Apple did when it created the iPod—it made a way for every customer to become their own DJ, to listen to what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Ditto for TiVo and television viewing. Because I not-so-secretly covet the Minicooper, I was intrigued to learn that the company lets you completely custom-design your car online. Because it takes a few weeks to put it together to your specs, the company gives you a way to track where your car is in the production cycle through its Web site.

Luxurious Commodities
This is where you take something basic and make it special. I found this one a little less compelling than the others, because it seems more gimicky, but Waters said that, for example, even dishwashing liquid can be made into a premium product. Caldrea, for instance, has so wooed some dishwashing folks that they have given up their dishwashers to scrub by hand because the products are so luxurious. Hmmm, I have a hard time believing that one, but I guess anything’s possible.

Extreme Relaxation
Don’t have to say too much about this one—we all know about spas that have become huge businesses by offering intense relaxation programs.

Social Capitalism
This one revisits the ASAE theme of social responsibility, or doing well by doing good, that David Cooperrider talked about in his general session. Waters said, “This is the new frontier for frontrunners who want to do the next great thing for their customers.”

At the end, she challenged us to think of how we can use these trends in our own work. For meetings, these should be pretty easy to work with, and most planners already play with at least some of them. Retro themes, registration systems that recognize attendees from past years and pre-fill areas of the form, team-building programs in spas, etc. I think, though, that we could do a lot more by really pumping up the paradoxes in the grand ways that some of the companies she cited do. Not sure how, but I know it can be done.

asae2007

Due to bus malfunctions, I was pretty late coming to the session on emergency preparedness/disaster planning, but one takeaway that could be useful to people is to check with government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to see if there is grant money available to help fund your organization’s disaster prep program.

Another point of interest was that, in an emergency situation that affects a large area, such as 9/11, landline and cellphone access can go down, but often you still can get through via text messaging. Session co-leader Danielle Dorling, manager OE/talent management with Home Depot Supply, suggested asking staff (and, to make it meetings-related, attendees) for their cellphone provider information as well as the usual contact info.

Maybe I missed it because it was in the beginning of the session, but again, while this was marked as an M&E session, the part I heard was all about maintaining business continuity and staff issues, not how to deal with an emergency situation at a meeting. Though, to be fair, Dorling did mention that you should know the emergency plans of all your vendors, including any hotels you have contracted with.

asae2007

There already are some great posts about the Bloggercon on Sunday at ASAE and The Center’s annual meeting in Chicago here,
here, and here, for example. So I won’t go into it much here.

I did want to clarify something that I didn’t get to say during our session, though. At the end, we went around the room and gave one tip we had found useful in our blogging. Being totally unprepared, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which was to post frequently. I got a fair amount of pushback on that one from the “quality is better than quantity” folks, but I stand by it when it comes to certain types of blogs.

Yes, if you’re posting deep, thoughtful, long posts of original material, you’re not going to do it every day (unless you don’t have a day job, that is!). But there are many different types of blogs, and not all of them are like that. And I think that’s OK—probably because, as you’ve probably noticed, face2face ain’t one of them!

I absolutely see the value of educational blogs with entries that are more like small journal articles, and I agree that you can’t throw that sort of thing up on your blog too frequently without burning out your readers (and yourself). But I also see the value of blogs like this one, where I scour the Web for things I think meeting planning and hospitality folks might like to know, but don’t want to spend the time I do searching through all the dreck to find it.

For more news-aggregating blogs like this one, I maintain frequency is key, as is putting in lots of links to more on what’s going on, which may not be as big a deal for other types of blogs. And, I would maintain, that a news-aggregating blog is just as appropriate for an association as the educational type, because it would help members stay on top of the latest news in their industry without having to read 120 online sources to find it every day.

OK, I feel better having been able to finally say that.

asae2007